Playing with Planets
An Outer Space Launch
Five, four, three, two, one
and... the exhilarating space
voyage into Professor Gerard
't Hoof t 's Playing with Planets began on November 26, 2008
at 1630hr at the Space Science Gallery
of the Science Centre Singapore.
Dimly illuminated in a cavernous
space of galaxies, milky ways and
planets, the Space Science Gallery offers the ideal setting for World
Scientific's book launch of Playing
with Planets. Of course, at the center
of the "universe" was 1999 Nobel
Laureate in Physics Professor Gerard
't Hooft, the author of Playing with Planets. Powering up the stellar glow
of the cosmic universe at the book
launch were other luminaries from
the scientific community — Professors
Harald Fritzsch, Ngee Pong Chang, K
C Wali, Lay Nam Cheng, and Cham
Tao Soon, the former president of
Nanyang Technological University.
The launch kicked off with
a short address by Dr K K Phua,
Chairman of World Scientific and Dr
Chew Tuan Chiong, Chief Executive
of Science Centre Singapore. Dr Phua
said World Scientific's collaboration
with Prof t'Hooft, whose scholarly
works have remained perennial
classics in physics, dated back to the
1990s. Hence, publishing the English
version of Prof t'Hooft's Playing with Planets, which is a popular
science book and in Dutch originally,
would inspire young minds and
aspiring scientists all over the world.
Ms Saskia 't Hooft, daughter of Prof
't Hooft and the English translator of
the book, shared some light-hearted
episodes of her working relationship
with her father. Prof 't Hooft made
an interesting "pitch" for his book,
keeping the audience spellbound by
his dissection of science fiction using
the laws of physics. Though looking
serious as an academic, his wit and
sense of humor came into full play.
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A Mind-Opening Book Launch
Turned Lively Intellectual Exchange
The Indian Renaissance book launch held on
September 5, 2008 at The Tanglin Club was deemed
as a mind-opener with interesting exchanges.
Well-written from the perspective of the
new generation of Indians, the author Mr Sanjeev Sanyal,
a Rhodes scholar, offers his insight into how stifling rules
for castes, professions, social norms and more have led to
India's centuries of decline.
While Dr S Jaishankar, the High Commissioner of
India, agreed to most points made in Mr Sanyal's book, he
differed, though, with the author's portrayal of India's first
Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, as a man who did not
take risks to change closed minds.
Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of Lee Kuan Yew
School of Public Policy, pointed out that India's challenge
is that "minds that have been the most open for the last
few hundred years have, in some important ways, become
closed".
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Remembering Allan Cormack in Cambridge
Imperial College Press (ICP) held a book
launch on July 31, 2008 for Imagining the
Elephant: A Biography of Allan MacLeod
Cormack by Christopher (Kit) Vaughan at St
John's College, Cambridge University.
Allan Cormack was a research student at
Cambridge University from 1947 to 1949. He was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 1979 for
his pioneering contributions to the development of
the computer-assisted tomography (CAT) scanner,
an honor he shared with Godfrey Hounsfield. The
book launch event provided a great opportunity for
Prof Vaughan to introduce his book to colleagues
and friends in the UK. Among the guests were alumni
from the University of Cape Town and Christina
Maclagan who took the striking photograph of Allan
Cormack which adorns the front cover of the book.
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